I started reading this last night, just for a little while before I went to bed, and ended up staying up until one in the morning to finish it.  It’s all about a girl called Frances whose brother Daniel has recently committed suicide.  She is trying to get involved with a service group called Unity, which is paying for her school scholarship and with which Daniel was very deeply involved.  The group isn’t very welcoming – particularly Daniel’s old girlfriend, Saskia – but Frances feels she owes it to Daniel.  However, things with Unity are not quite right.  Actually quite, quite wrong, and Frances wants to find out why.

This paragraph will contain enormous spoilers.  Frankly I do not tend to like books where people’s family members commit  suicide.  When I started the book, I thought I would probably read it for a little while, find it upsetting, and toss it out of bed.  But – and again I say unto ye, embrace the doctrine of reading the end first – I read the end after a few pages, and ascertained that Daniel didn’t actually kill himself but was murdered by his girlfriend who was working to bring down Unity because it was a big drug scam; and after that I was okay to read the rest of the book.

It was interesting and absorbing and creepy – a bit like the better ones of Margaret Haddix’s books, which I read years and years ago.  In that I enjoyed it a lot, and I stayed up late to finish it, but I don’t feel like I’ll need to read it ever again.

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